Hi guys, I have a question and hoping some of you have dealt with this!

I am 9 weeks pregnant and hubby and I have started to talk about baby names.

For some context, he is Fijian, and protecting his culture is very important to him.

In the Fijian culture, the first child is named by the father, the second by the mother, etc etc, and names are passed down through the family, so it has to be named after someone in his family.

His dads brother passed away when he was young, and out of respect to his dad my husband has told me that the baby will be named Matthew if it is a boy.

The only issue with this is that I actually don’t like the name, I think it was too common, I have a LOT of friends named ‘matt’ and I also don’t think it’s a cute name for a baby. I wish to respect his cultural traditions as I know how important it is to him but I am struggling with this.

He has told me stories of people and children in his village who haven’t respected the naming traditions if they are married to kaivalagi (white people) that have been shunned and I really don’t want that to happen to him or our child.

He has said that if we give it a different first name, and do Matthew as the middle name that his family will call it Matthew, and I think that’s a bit confusing for the poor kid if it gets called one name by my family when we are in Australia, and then another when it’s Fijian relatives are around.

My absolute last resort is to spell it the Fijian way- maciu (it’s still pronounced the same) and nickname him ‘mac’. But I still feel like I am compromising with that and won’t be happy.

I absolutely love the name forrest and if it was my choice that would be his name and I just don’t know if I can give that up!!

Do I just suck it up and deal with it? Has anyone had a similar experience with husbands or other family members?